The following story contains from “The Hunting Wives.”
“The Hunting Wives” has captivated Netflix audiences with its salacious Texas women and twisty, addictive murder mystery plot, boosting the series to the No. 1 spot on the platform’s viewership charts. But believe it or not, creator Rebecca Cutter told TheWrap that the road to the show’s success was not so clear cut.
Based on the novel of the same name, “The Hunting Wives” follows fish-out-of-water East Coaster Sophie O’Neill (Brittany Snow) as she attempts to find her footing when her husband moves her family to East Texas. Cutter made several changes from the book — one being upping the political undertones within the Texas town of Maple Brook.
The outspoken “Hunting Wives” are pro-gun and anti-abortion. They attend the local megachurch on Sundays, but they are not inclusive of the church women from the other side of town. Cutter was nervous that audiences would not see the humor in this hypocrisy at first but decided to take the risk anyway.
“I also thought there’s such an opportunity to do something that feels really modern and right now if we don’t shy away from the culture war stuff,” she told TheWrap. “I honestly was scared that a bigger deal was going to be made out of the politics and that it would overshadow what the show actually is.”
As social media has taken to the Netflix hit, swooning over Sophie and Margo’s (Malin Akerman) lesbian affair and guffawing at the kills throughout the series, Cutter realized that “people have really gotten it and have been in on the joke.”
“The Hunting Wives” was originally produced by Lionsgate Television for Starz as a limited series. Following the companies’ split this spring, Lionsgate re-acquired the title and pitched it to Netflix to give it a chance to have a potentially longer run on the streamer. The powerhouse streamer picked up the show six weeks before its July release. Cutter said the whiplash of her series’ fate was “really scary” at first, but she was grateful it landed at Netflix since “that’s the biggest possible audience that you could get.”
The executive producer and showrunner credited the show’s addictive and binge-able quality to her writers’ room and her experience in case-of-the-week TV. She noted that the thriller leans on that network, conventional story engine created to keep viewers hooked.
“I think we lost that a little bit in prestige TV,” she said. “Things got a little more indulgent, a little more artsy-fartsy and slow. So to have something that just moves and it’s funny and it’s fun and it’s sexy … I think it just works.”
Another risk Cutter took when adapting the novel into a series was changing the killer.
“I thought, God, if we could get away with changing the killer to Margo when she’s the most obvious suspect the entire time — if I could pull that off, that would be pretty huge,” she said. But in order to make it happen, Cutter knew she had to jam the series full of red herrings and be one step ahead of the audience at the expense of fan-favorites like Jill (Katie Lowes) and Starr (Chrissy Metz).
As for the rest of the finale, Cutter admitted, “I went a little bonkers.” She didn’t want the tampon-abortion reveal — or as the writers’ room called it, the “smoking tampon” — to be the final beat of the series.
After Sophie connects the dots that Margo was the one who had the abortion and not Abby, she realized that her friend-turned-lover was the killer the whole time and falsely accused her. Instead of going to the police, Sophie lets on to Margo that she knows it was her, sending Margo into a spiral. Her protective older brother attempts to save Margo, but he ends up dead underneath Sophie’s car in the process.
“I felt like we had to go one step beyond and think how do we get these two women to be more on equal footing,” she said of her leading ladies. “That was the idea of killing Kyle. [Sophie]’s really longing for Margo, but she knows she’s a killer, and it puts it into this really complicated stew of emotion that can provide a story engine for a Season 2.”
“The Hunting Wives” is not yet renewed for a second season but Cutter and the series’ stars Snow and Akerman have all expressed interest in returning to East Texas. It is also unclear who exactly would distribute Season 2 if greenlit.
“Nothing has been said officially, but I’m feeling really hopeful about the idea of a Season 2,” Cutter said. “There’s tons of story left to tell, so put me in coach. I’m waiting.”
All eight episodes of “The Hunting Wives” are available to stream on Netflix.
